• While Stormtrack has discontinued its hosting of SpotterNetwork support on the forums, keep in mind that support for SpotterNetwork issues is available by emailing [email protected].

2025 Chase Season Epilogue

My season ended up....satisfactory. Really all about diamonds in the rough this year and more like one of those Arkansas diamonds you have to dig for as opposed to the crown jewels this season offered up. My chase rate was also down this year, as I kept it close to home. I chased in Kansas maybe three times, Texas several times and the rest were within Oklahoma borders. I don't even have a good reason as to why this was the case.

Arnett was of course a good score. Littlefield, Texas on April 25th was pretty alright and an overall fun chase with the slow storm motion. The Liberal,KS / Beaver, OK storm on May 28th was great from a tornado/structure/low convergence standpoint, and maybe one of the best chases of the year for me was the Hydro, OK cell on June 14th for those same reasons sans the tornado.

I'm starting to really hone in on how I want to approach my future chases, so my criteria for a successful season is now tremendously different than what it was maybe 10 years ago. A storm that may or may not produce a tornado that is lightly attended by chasers with a near zero chance of causing injury or fatalities that I can soak in for hours accompanied by a low stress/irritation factor seems to be the direction I'm headed, which means I'll probably grade my future seasons on how much enjoyment I got out of it instead of how much I scored, or how much I missed. About to become the American Pickers of chasing I reckon. :p
 
2025 will go down as likely my worst year ever, which is crazy considering how bad 2020 and 2021 were. I'm a photographer and I've taken zero photos of storms this year. I've been working way, way too much which has limited my opportunities, and the rest have been somewhere between a tragedy and a comedy. The southern high plains where most of the action was this year was out of my reach, so I missed everything down there. I was five minutes late to the Arnett tornadoes because the target ended up being three hours further from home than anticipated. The day after that was trash. And there were a couple of busts up here locally that of course I had time for but not for Wellfleet day.

But the real kick in the nuts has been the last two days. I had wanted to make a two day trip to the Dakotas this weekend as the northern plains looked like they had finally woken up after a 10 year hiatus. But my brother scheduled a Friday meeting with our family attorney that I had to go to, so ND was out. Yesterday I was all packed up and ready to leave for eastern SD but I decided not to as I had an 8 a.m. golf tournament this morning and, at best, I would have gotten home at 2 a.m. I might have been able to do that in my 20's, but it doesn't sound ideal anymore. So I watched streams of the epic tornado(s) and hated life for a while. Turns out I got the golf tournament time wrong and our tee time isn't until 11:00. I would have had plenty of time for tornadoes and sleep. Just a comedy of errors.

Sorry for the rant, it's cathartic.
 
MY PERSONAL SEASON

Tornadoes: 16 on 7 days
Quality tornadoes: 8 on 5 days (4/24, 5/18, 6/5, 6/20, 6/28)

Obnoxious collage with different storms/tors in each shot:

collage_1000px.jpg

My "visible in a photo or video" tornado count of 16 is technically a career high, although previous years that came close (2011 and 2016) might've had fewer bird farts and stat padders in the mix; this year's June 5-6 sequence around Lubbock was a stat padder bonanza.

Against all my expectations pre-season, and even by late May honestly, this has been one of my best seasons. It featured candidates for my best tornado day ever (6/28) and best structured storm ever (6/7). Even removing both of those, it would've been a reasonably good season with multiple quality tornado days and additional good structure days. The fact that this came on the heels of active seasons in 2023-24 only makes these results all the more surprising. I’ve certainly never had another three-year stretch anywhere near this good.

As I'll probably talk about more in my general thoughts, the geographical distribution of central US activity this spring was almost immaculate in my book. I saw quality storms on numerous days, and all of them were either in the southern High Plains or the eastern Dakotas, two of the easiest and most pleasant chase zones on the planet. There were a few significant events way out in the Midwest and Mid South, even later into May which is always annoying as a Plains snob -- but the number of quality Plains days overshadowed that enough not to bother me.

I've been moaning for years about the slow death of June, and with it, the northern Plains' core season. This year was a good reminder that its coffin isn’t sealed yet, even if the climate might gradually be trending that way. On June 19-20, and then again on June 28, I took the kind of long trips north for Dakotas tornadoes that I've been dreaming of -- but not sensing practical opportunities for -- for quite a few years. June 28 was a surreal bonanza of training, structured supercells spawning long-lived, photogenic tornadoes in practically the same spot over a 3-hour period. The experience of making those trips north around the solstice -- 10pm sunsets, everything green, no worries about crashing cold fronts, practically unlimited moisture and instability -- was everything I’d romanticized it to be. When those late season trips north deliver memorable results, it's a kind of euphoria that eclipses most other chase scenarios by a comfortable margin. It reminded me that I probably won't ever be able to pry myself away from this ridiculous activity, even if it’s sometimes full of heartache for years at a time. In fact, coming off those amazing trips, I've been thinking a lot about how absurd most of my early-mid season desperation chases look by comparison. Ironically, it almost hurts to verify to myself that the "active June north of I-70" regime that's been so jarringly MIA the last 15 years really is as blissful as I thought; to be reminded that it’s probably the absolute pinnacle of our hobby, and one of the primary regimes that helped get a lot of veterans from the late 20th century addicted.

To be sure, not everything was flowers and rainbows. My frustration with crowds and conga lines reached a new level of seriousness this year, which I elaborated on in the dedicated thread here. Also, I missed the TOTY and possible TOTD on June 16 by noping out on 20+ degree T/Td spreads 8 hours from home in the middle of the workweek. I continued not to make great storm-scale decisions in terms of roads, positioning, and timing, which has been my Achilles heel for as long as I've been able to find tornadic supercells. The month of May was honestly not that great, in my opinion. I saw Arnett, but if I hadn't, the whole month would've pretty much been a wash for me with a couple days of B- to B structure and a bunch more cap busts, grungy slop, and synoptically interesting setups/patterns crapping out. Without a doubt, June saved my season and then some... hell, it pretty much was my season.

This was my 20th season on the Plains. Of the first 18 seasons, only 3 gave me quality tornadoes in all three main chase months (Apr-May-Jun), and those were all separated by at least 5 years. I’ve now hit that benchmark two years in a row (2024-2025), and very narrowly missed three years in a row. At this point, It’s clear this has been a pretty special stretch that I need to step back and appreciate… because it certainly can’t last forever, and it’s already lasted longer than I would’ve imagined possible!

Final piece of useless minutiae: I’m pretty sure this was my first year with quality tornadoes in 5 states (NM, TX, OK, SD, ND).



THOUGHTS ON THE SEASON OVERALL


It was a fascinating and topsy-turvy Plains season. I can't really think of any close comparisons going back to when I started in 2006.

Given the cool season La Nina and nascent drought conditions over the winter, I felt reasonably confident this would be a drought-stricken spring on the S/C Plains. If true, that meant elevated chances of a bad Plains season, or of something like 2011 or 2013 mainly focused east of I-35 even if it turned out active. And by mid-March, we were bearing horrific wildfires and 70 mph post-dryline winds that blanketed OKC with a full coating of west Texas dust. It looked like the nightmare 2006 redux scenario was fully on track. Then some glimmers of hope appeared in the form of a couple rainy systems for OK/TX by early-mid April… but the Plains still hadn’t given anyone a chase photo worth sharing at that point.

The April 24-28 sequence stands out as the inflection point that turned everything on its head. Out of nowhere, a nearly weeklong stretch of late season style setups for W TX and NM materialized, including nightly MCSs worthy of May or June. I can't remember ever seeing an extended "sloshing dryline" High Plains pattern like that so early in the season. The first two days, April 24-25, produced a string of tornadic supercells in the Panhandle that featured photo ops at the upper echelon of what April typically offers (especially Matador and Pampa/Miami on 4/24). The remaining days weren't as great (outside the Sandhills madness at dusk), but by the end of that week, drought was a distant memory for most of the Plains south of I-70. In fact, by early May, some areas like the Lubbock-Childress corridor were greener than I've ever seen them.

May was a mixed bag. It certainly didn't match the dizzying pace of 2024 when it came to quality tornadoes. The first half was pretty dead, all things considered, although there were multiple surprise overperformers deep into TX. The second half was better, but not exceptional. Arnett was a great storm, but that trough ejection badly underperformed its apparent potential when taking into consideration both 5/18 and 5/19. The activity over Memorial Day weekend into the following week was decent, but without much memorable outside of E CO on 5/23 and the very flukey postfrontal Clovis storm on 5/25. All in all, I'd argue May failed to capitalize on the miraculous removal of drought as a constraint, coming in around or slightly below average in historical terms.

If April slapped me into remembering that a cool season La Nina doesn’t always seal our fate with drought, June smacked me again by flaunting tremendous and even consistent results while I worried and moaned about a lack of classically favorable patterns. And I don’t just mean “big troughs;” even sustained SW flow over a broad warm sector was tough to find, but it didn’t seem to matter. My best guess is that PBL moisture and/or the character of the EML must have been subtly favorable. Either that, or we were just damn lucky with mesoscale details on quite a few different days. I’d argue that a 500 mb loop of June 2025 wouldn’t stick out as being far more favorable than many recent Junes that did virtually nothing. From the Morton-Amistad-Texline sequence to kick off the month to Wellfleet, Jamestown/Enderlin, Gary, and multiple other respectable ND tornado days in between all those, we squeezed some kind of divine lemonade out of an apparent pattern of lemons. I think most would agree June stole the show this year.

Other thoughts:
  • The temporal pacing and consistency of quality Plains setups and storms this season was pretty good: probably on par with 2024, but not quite up to the level of 2023. Not much happened before late April, although the final week of the month made up for it. May was a weak point with lots of scoured moisture early on, a promising stretch mid-month that turned out a bit frustrating, and then an active but somewhat grungy late month pattern. June was… exceptionally consistent, and unlike anything we’ve seen in over a decade.

  • The geographical distribution of quality Plains storms was simply fantastic. There were two main hotspots: (1) E NM and W TX into NW OK, and (2) the Dakotas, mainly east of the Missouri. Both are practically perfect chase areas in my book. The only legitimate complaint I can see is that KS, arguably the best chase state overall, continued its recent trend of underperformance. Still, if you were mobile enough to have both the S High Plains and N Plains/Siouxland in your domain, I don’t see how it could’ve been much better: numerous good days, with very few of them in garbage areas like N/C TX, C/E OK, W MO, etc… or even good but roadless areas like WY/MT. If every chase season were guaranteed a few good storms in this year’s hotspots, our hobby would become a far more reliable source of enjoyment overnight.

  • It’s crazy to say after how much I’ve worried about a general downtrend in Plains activity with climate change, but 2023-25 pretty much has to be the best three-year stretch since 2003-05. I don’t think it tops 2003-05, but we’ve never put together a string like this since then, even though a few individual years were great. The reason 2003-05 stays firmly on top brings me to my final comment…

  • The lack of synoptically evident outbreaks and obvious multi-storm dryline tornado events is getting exhausting to talk about. They practically stopped existing circa 2012-13, with a couple exceptions at the fringes of the Plains, or on the margins of the term “outbreak.” That’s 13 years! This may deserve its own thread, but I’m playing with the hypothesis that the 1990s-2000s were more of a long-term exception to the rule than we assumed at the time. That era gave the impression that big dryline outbreaks and verified HIGH risks on the Plains were all but guaranteed at least once every few years, and even that getting multiple events per year was -- while impressive -- not that exceptional. Our current era paints such a starkly different picture over such a long stretch now that it’s worth taking a step back. The implications for chasers, as I’ve said many times now, are quite interesting: first and foremost, the prototypical “casual chaser” gets kneecapped in this regime where Wellfleet and Gary are representative of how we cobble together good seasons. Not far behind in terms of pain would be serious chasers who live far outside the Alley and want to see a sustained or obvious pattern before deciding to make a trip. Fairly serious chasers living in the Alley like me come out alright, while the most hardcore “never stop chasing” crowd absolutely feasts. This has been the general rule for over a decade now; who knows whether a reversion to the mean is coming soon, but the past few years show there’s never any shortage of surprises that can include reversals of long-running trends.
 
Arnett was a great storm, but that trough ejection badly underperformed its apparent potential when taking into consideration both 5/18 and 5/19.

......

I’d argue that a 500 mb loop of June 2025 wouldn’t stick out as being far more favorable than many recent Junes that did virtually nothing.

This.

I have to book PTO a week out, or more because my workplace operates with bare minimum staffing.

None of the miraculous June northern Plains activity was able to push east and provide a good day or two in eastern Iowa/northern Illinois that I could chase after work. Missed all of it since none of it looked good enough far enough out to take off. I was out for that two-day sequence in May (booked the PTO on Friday the 9th based on the Euro) and saw Arnett, but come on, man.
 
Quality tornadoes: 8 on 5 days (4/24, 5/18, 6/5, 6/20, 6/28)

Still have to get around to doing my own Recap, but it’s frustrating to me that in a year when I was able to make two separate trips for the first time ever, and spend a total of three weeks on the Plains instead of the usual two, the crappy May still meant being around for only 2 of the 5 dates highlighted (and I missed Arnett on 5/18, which yes is my own fault for not deviating from my southwestern KS target sooner, but in my defense that should have been a great spot if the setup hadn’t underperformed until after dark). Mid- to late-June northern Plains chasing was out of the question for me this year due to work and family obligations (I’ve never been able to do that, but hope it works out next year, especially hearing the superlatives with which Brett describes chasing there). I had planned to keep late April as an option, but ended up foolishly committing myself to a couple of social things that last weekend, thinking “what are the odds anything good enough is going to happen to fly out there for.” I think 4/24 was always out of the question for me anyway because of a board meeting.
 
This.

I have to book PTO a week out, or more because my workplace operates with bare minimum staffing.

None of the miraculous June northern Plains activity was able to push east and provide a good day or two in eastern Iowa/northern Illinois that I could chase after work. Missed all of it since none of it looked good enough far enough out to take off. I was out for that two-day sequence in May (booked the PTO on Friday the 9th based on the Euro) and saw Arnett, but come on, man.

May have to add a corollary to this, because tomorrow is actually looking like a decently interesting afternoon backyard chase, knock on wood.
 
May have to add a corollary to this, because tomorrow is actually looking like a decently interesting afternoon backyard chase, knock on wood.

All the good stuff happened while I was stuck at work. If this event had waited until around 21Z (like CAMS were suggesting) I would have been right on it. By the time I got off at 18Z, ran home and grabbed my cameras everything was either crapping out or out of reach. Went for the one that had had a nice hook in Green County, it looked like trash when I finally got to it but stuck with it and it eventually went tornado-warned again near Cambridge. Got a brief view of an updraft base with a clear slot near Lake Mills, but that was about it.

Tired of always missing everything in my backyard. It's always either too early in the day (you'd think getting off at 1PM you'd have plenty of time to catch a tornado 40 minutes from home), or happens way out of season/doesn't look good enough to go out (2/8/24).
 
Last edited:
Similar experience yesterday for me. I had more work obligations, so I'd guessed in advance I wouldn't be available early enough to chase, but it was painful to watch tornado warnings fire both north and south of me, a short drive away, while I was stuck at work.

(As a side note, the 2/8/24 Wisconsin event is close to my heart, even though I didn't see anything. The wintertime tornado warnings nearby- Wisconsin's only recorded February tornadoes! - really got my attention. I've wanted to see a tornado since I was a kid, but hadn't had opportunity or felt I could justify the risk of chasing. I saw the tornado warnings go off and suddenly realized I had a car of my own and enough know-how to chase safely. I was too far away to see anything that day, but it got me started on chasing.)
 
2025 is looking to be my worst chase season ever only outdone by 2012.....

I hate saying that because overall it was an incredible year, but I've been dealing with some very severe mental health problems that have plagued me my whole life, and just kinda came to a head this year. I am very thankful to have gotten two pretty good tornado days (May 18th near Arnett, OK/Greensburg, KS/Pratt, KS/Plevna, KS and June 18th in Central Illinois). The May 18th event was spectacular especially the night-time cyclic supercell. If that had been during the daytime, likely would have been one of my best chases. I made a lot of bad choices on days to sit out and work and days to chase this year. It is what it is though, there will always be more storms, and 2026 will be here sooner than we know it.

I haven't even pulled off my videos from the May 18th event, that is how down I've felt about this year, it pales in comparison to what anyone else has posted, so it's like, what's the point?

Of course this is all barring something crazy last minute like a huge fall/winter setup like we saw in 2013 and 2018, or maybe a late summer show. Who knows.
 
2025 is looking to be my worst chase season ever only outdone by 2012.....

I hate saying that because overall it was an incredible year, but I've been dealing with some very severe mental health problems that have plagued me my whole life, and just kinda came to a head this year. I am very thankful to have gotten two pretty good tornado days (May 18th near Arnett, OK/Greensburg, KS/Pratt, KS/Plevna, KS and June 18th in Central Illinois). The May 18th event was spectacular especially the night-time cyclic supercell. If that had been during the daytime, likely would have been one of my best chases. I made a lot of bad choices on days to sit out and work and days to chase this year. It is what it is though, there will always be more storms, and 2026 will be here sooner than we know it.

I haven't even pulled off my videos from the May 18th event, that is how down I've felt about this year, it pales in comparison to what anyone else has posted, so it's like, what's the point?

Of course this is all barring something crazy last minute like a huge fall/winter setup like we saw in 2013 and 2018, or maybe a late summer show. Who knows.
I hope you are doing ok. I'm very sorry to hear about your mental health struggles, they can be exceptionally difficult to work through.
 
My 2025 was the dumbest season I've had in my ~12 years of chasing. 'Dumbest' is the only word I can think that captures it. Despite frequently traveling so I am not always home the last couple years, this spring I set myself up to be continuously in the Denver area as a base from early May to mid June, thinking 6 of the statistically best chase weeks was sure to score something within about 7-8 hours one way. I chase solo often and so longer treks are difficult for one day chases, and there is rarely multi-day chases that are obvious from a forecast perspective anymore. I have an uncanny ability to waste 2-3 days of PTO on such systems that ultimately bust when I do commit, and somehow when I decide to stay away, they always produce something photogenic.

Overall, I was only able to chase 3 days in 6 weeks because much of May and early third of June was dead (unless you sat in TX panhandle). A couple bad luck issues came up with work and personal scheduling despite me having probably 90% of days open to leave on a moments notice, so I missed structure and tornadoes in W TX and E NM. Two of my three days out to KS and TX were duds that had looked like they should be great days, with the adjacent days in the exact same area producing epic tornadoes or structure despite less obvious forecasts (not counting Morton, which was a fairly obvious forecast but I was not able to chase). I saw the Akron, CO tornado on my 2nd outing of the three. I didn't get any photos that met my standard of decent since I was a bit out of position, and I didn't find that tornado or storm particularly photogenic even from the best photos I have seen of it. Mid June, I had to resume travel. Of course the next week incredibly photogenic stuff started happening 4-6 hours from Denver in NE. So what a waste out of that 6 weeks for me.

I am currently setup for monsoon in the southwest, and so far that has been absolute garbage on a level even worse than last year. Right around 8/1, models show maybe finally (after 9+ months with few periods of minor pattern shift) the high pressure might move off the region, but I doubt it because my cynicism is reaching new heights and the area is stuck in a 30 year drought. The NOAA Climate Center predicts a more active than average monsoon and hurricane season, but they said similar last year and were flat out wrong.

I don't get that upset over missing chases or busting anymore, but I will admit the cumulative nature of two very bad seasons for me personally even when arranging for flexibility to be out, has me grumpy. Both the last two years had opportunities I just couldn't make, so I have to keep the memory alive of the great chase days so I don't lost interest entirely.

The people I see succeeding the most the last few years are out anywhere, all the time, and often do not have PTO concerns. The jet stream locking in position instead of spring oscillation seems to be a major factor in unpredictable performance of most systems from a forecast perspective. Chasing everything obviously is a statistically winning plan if you can do it.

I have learned over the last few years I will have to commit to the hotspots and stay there for many days. Next year I am planning to camp out in TX panhandle or wherever else shows to be an active region for as long as it takes to get something good.
 
2025 has been a rebuilding year of sorts for me. The Air Force moved me from OK out to CO right at the end of 2024, I then had training and getting oriented to a whole new mission set out here, then I switched offices and have been learning ANOTHER new mission set, and I'm now in the process of getting out of the military to start whatever comes next. On top of all that, I've basically been having to relearn how to chase with different dynamics and terrain out this way compared to the southern plains. I was able to chase a couple of times in E CO, where I caught my first CO supercells, but I just didn't have the flexibility to get out as much as I wanted and I doubt that will improve much through the end of 2025, and so I'm ending the season with 0 tornadoes. Despite all of the really good reasons for having a crappy year, it still stings coming right on the heels of 2024, which was my best career year. I'm planning to stay in Colorado Springs after I get out of the Air Force, so hopefully in 2026 I'll be able to get a better handle on things, travel more, or otherwise improve my luck.
 
I'd definitely feel safe to say that my season isn't done yet (Colorado is known for summer-time surprises; Yuma 2023)... but given I am out of action through this week due to a work trip in PA (so I missed yesterday's tornado three hours from home AND the baseball hail that hammered my house at 4am), I'd say I'm probably far enough along to epilogue my season to this point...

I've had great debate (three-day cross country trip allowed for plenty of windshield time) regarding where this season stacks up for me, and it is among one of the highest. Going in to this season, I would've rated my best years as follows...

#1 2023; #2 2016; #3 2009; #4 2010; #5 2008

Those seasons after #3 would probably shift with a bit more recollection of the chases, but the top 3 are pretty solid years..

2025 ranks as one of my highest in tornado quality by far... particularly that May 14-23 stint that included the photogenic landspouts in Nebraska, the Blodgett tornado, Scott/Grinnell, Kansas event, plus Akron '25. Those on their own would've put it up in the top 3, but then came Morton, which even further elevates the season as a whole. I certainly have come away with some of the best images/video of my career. Hands down, Grinnell's encounter on I-70 and my clips of Morton rank among some of the best I have ever shot (and certainly the most 'viral').

I tend to sit on things for a bit before I race a ranking to #1. I did this with Akron 2023 despite 19 tornadoes and one of the most photogenic twin tornado sequences ever, but after stewing over it, it was an easy decision to let it take over the #1 chase spot. Now, there is NO change in that; June 21, 2023 is still the #1 chase of all time for me, but the season as a whole...

With the two tornadoes I saw last Friday in Nebraska, my running total is 36 for the season which is third all time (only behind 2023 [50] and 2010 [43]), so the numbers are definitely there. But the quality of a lot of those is hard to deny, even as the majority (as usual) are stat-padders.

I'm gonna give it through the summer... I'm probably one more good tornado chase away from making it the easy #1 (had I been home on June 16 to play that southwest Nebraska day, I wouldn't even be having this discussion). And even still, I'm thinking pretty hard about it now. 2023 had the quality, and it and 2016 could go back and forth, but it's hard to deny what 2025 has been as a whole.

Outside of tornadoes, the season has provided some great hail (April 17) and several good lightning opportunities, which usually come after June when our monsoon season kicks in, so I'm already well scored on that, too. Professionally, it's been a great year for me as well, highlighted with the live coverage of the Blodgett tornado. I feel like this season, I took so many lessons of years past, and it resulted in some awesome images. I was very deliberate in taking photos, making sure I shot the hell out of stuff, and let my video take a backseat (meaning I was using mounted cameras and just rolling). I made good decisions; didn't waffle around much on questionable days, and I was in good positions on the days that counted.

It's an easy top 3; and I imagine it's gonna find its way taking the crown as my best storm chasing season. I won't call it yet, but should another good tornado day loom for me, it will undoubtedly claim the spot with no further discussion needed.

TOP TORNADO DAYS OF 2025
1. June 5 (Morton/Lubbock) 10 Tornadoes
2. May 16 (Blodgett/Sikeston) 3 Tornadoes
3. May 18 (Scott/Grinnell) 6 Tornadoes
4. May 14 (Hershey/North Platte) 3 Tornadoes
5. April 17 (Fremont/Tabor) 3 Tornadoes

SEASON STATS AS OF JUNE 17
TOTAL LOGS: 34 (21 'Chases')
MILES: 22,058
TORNADOES: 36
TORNADO DAYS: 11
STATES CHASED: CO, WY, NE, KS, OK, TX, NM, IA, MO, IL, AR, TX, TN, MS, AL

508017136_1256015362566449_4188167416692994228_n.jpg


505850983_1251989232969062_6351502932109544376_n.jpg


502735490_1249871823180803_702379020370064523_n.jpg


500327420_1245360636965255_173265135858319137_n.jpg


500906637_1245360496965269_8013001708403818917_n.jpg


500309192_1245360696965249_2308646305968248744_n.jpg


501006337_1245360203631965_6293569223617514506_n.jpg


500765702_1245360436965275_3577628409731187160_n.jpg


494353375_1223752865792699_316530590157120327_n.jpg


491779412_1216364306531555_3828516348366491084_n.jpg
You can now retire. There is nothing left to shoot!!!!! Nice stuff.
 
Yet another strong, photogenic tornado near Watertown this evening from what looked this morning like a flawed/marginal setup (and only a SVR watch). I almost started heading north yesterday evening despite my skepticism, but unfortunately talked myself out of it.

I remember 2010 was extra notable for the fact that after a great peak season, it just kept producing sporadic good stuff up north even well into the summer. Seeing shades of that in 2025, even though I'm not sure we've quite matched 2010 overall since it was better from March-May.

I think the eastern Dakotas might be my new favorite chase area in the country, at least when ignoring home bias. When I was driving back home after 6/20 from Jamestown to Aberdeen to Mitchell, I kept thinking to myself that I'd been driving for hours and every mile of it had been perfect chase country. It's basically everything good about Iowa but without the hills, and it's in the core of the Plains where high-end structure is more common (a phenomenon that seems to drop off some as you move toward the east and lower elevation).

I just hope 2025 marks the beginning of a period where the Dakotas come back to life, rather than a brief aberration from their depressing dormancy the past 10-15 years.
 
Back
Top